Salt Lake City Criminal Defense Law Blog

A Los Angeles judge recently sentenced a retired LAPD detective to 27 to life for homicide. Authorities say that the detective murdered her ex-boyfriend's wife out of jealousy and then covered up the murder by making it look like a burglary. The murder took place in 1986 but it was considered a cold case until 2009 when DNA tests were run on a bite mark that the wife had sustained during the fatal attack in which she was beaten and shot three times.

During the trial prosecutors alleged that the former LAPD detective was in love with her ex-boyfriend and became enraged after learning of his marriage. The ex-boyfriend said that he had only casually dated the detective and that he did not consider her a girlfriend.

A Utah man who threatened to expose his same-sex encounters with a BYU student was recently sentenced to 15 days in jail and a year of probation. The man was convicted of extortion and attempted theft by extortion, but his voyeurism and forcible sodomy charges were dropped by prosecutors in exchange for his pleas. The man must also pay a $636 fine.

The 36-year-old Orem man allegedly met the 21-year-old BYU student online and began exchanging emails and text messages. The flirtatious exchange turned to extortion when the student sent some sexually explicit photos of himself and the Orem man threatened to send the photos to BYU officials. The Orem man then taped a subsequent sexual encounter with the student and demanded $260 to remain silent.

A Salt Lake County woman is under arrest under suspicion of driving under the influence. The 41-year-old woman's arrest comes after she allegedly caused a car accident early yesterday morning that injured a mother and her two children.

The crash happened shortly after 6 a.m. yesterday on State Route 201. Authorities allege that the woman in the striking car ran a red light and hit a Nissan containing the mother and her two children.

Rock star and gun rights activist Ted Nugent pleaded guilty earlier this week to fish and game violations in Alaska. The rocker will pay a $10,000 fine, serve two years of probation, and is banned from hunting in Alaska or on U.S. Forest Service lands because he killed a bear after wounding another bear that he failed to capture.

Nugent killed the bear in 2009 for his cable TV show, "Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild," on Sukkwan Island in Southeast Alaska. Under Alaska law, there is a single-bear bag limit per regulatory year and a wounded bear counts toward that limit even if it is not caught. Nugent therefore violated Alaska law by killing the second bear after failing to catch the wounded bear.